Ruined Map - Abe Kobo [94]
“I think all those things are related. Even if you’re alone among utter strangers you can manage not to be nervous … whether you’re in a crowded streetcar or lost in an unfamiliar town …”
“What was the color of the raincoat?”
“Very ordinary … let’s see, a yellowish-brown or beige, I guess … the color of any raincoat.”
“Was it new or did it look as if it had been worn a long time?”
“No, it wasn’t new. It was quite worn. It seems to me there were grease spots on the cuffs and the collar. Yes, I remember. It was one Mr. Nemuro had been wearing a long time. He was strong on repairing cars, and often instead of overalls he would wear the raincoat when he crawled under the car.”
I abruptly ordered the driver to stop. A darkened town, where only the streets were broad, bespeckled with street lights. A sign about night work on a water main was lit by a spotlight and shone red, while a number of helmets painted with a phosphorescent paint repeated again and again the same tedious motion.
“Let’s get out of here and cool off. You know the reason without asking.”
“How can I know?” he said, shrinking back defiantly. “I was just about to tell you everything.”
“Think it over until you do know. Come on … out you go.”
“You’ll be sorry.”
“That’s enough. Unfortunately, the raincoat I have right at hand in safe keeping. Start all over again after you’ve thought up a cleverer lie you can’t see through. Take an aspirin. Have a good night’s sleep.”
I jabbed him roughly in the neighborhood of his fifth rib with my index and middle fingers locked together. Tashiro gave a little grunt, twisting his body as the upper half fell forward. He sprang up on one leg, barely avoiding falling over, and, facing the closing door, shouted hoarsely: “I followed him! I followed him! I did!”
I LEFT the car at the top of the slope on the plateau where the housing development was situated. Besides the money I had spent for coffee with Tashiro, there was the unintentionally large tip I had given the taxi driver because I was drunk and the unexpected expense at the bar of the nude studio. What could I claim as justifiable expenses? I wondered. A claim had to fit with the contents of my report. Of course, I could not say that there was nothing worthwhile at all to report on. Even killing time has some value. I thought that I should get a really first-rate eraser for the purpose of erasing the equivocal and useless lines which for over two hours had connected me with a potential pseudo-runaway.
But it was close to impossible to put together in an objective report that would be meaningful to others such vague results. Writing that a liar confessed he had lied was the same as writing nothing at all. Even in thinking it over the only thing that stood out clearly was the naked white thigh beneath the counter, only the feeling in the palm of my hand that seemed to adhere to it. As for the dissected parts of the girl, supposing I could fit them into the jigsaw picture without going any further than I had, then it would seem I could only seek the remaining parts behind the lemon-yellow curtains. Like some insect lured to a light trap, I again walked the street of the housing development in the direction of her window. I didn’t even particularly wonder at the fact that I had no reason, none worth the name, at least …
No, that was not quite true. My car, abandoned there near the steps that led up to her place, just beyond the second street light from here (I had left it on the pretext of being drunk and now I was even more so) became flimsier and flimsier as a reason. I walked over the trampled path in the dead grass, shortening the distance between me and the lemon-yellow window. At length, some thirty-two normal paces from the corner of Building 3, I raised my head, and the line of street lights, glass eyes that no longer knew how to blink, stood in a row like charms, summoning a festival procession that would never come; the faint rectangular light that burned in the window had long since given up such things as festivals. I was struck on the side of my